


A Special Set Of Skills

by Smoakin_dontburnyourself



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Blackmail, Brief Violence, CIA AU, CIA agents - Freeform, Implied abuse, Kind of a The Man From UNCLE AU, M/M, Only Kind of - Freeform, partners, spy AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-22 21:20:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11388648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smoakin_dontburnyourself/pseuds/Smoakin_dontburnyourself
Summary: The Mission was simple enough, deliver the bad guy’s book of contacts to the CIA. The methods, well, those are never quite so simple and when Mickey finally makes contact with agent Ian Gallagher, sparks fly and he’ll find himself in more danger than he could ever imagine.





	1. Got a Job for You, Milkovich

**Author's Note:**

> I re-watched The Man from U.N.C.L.E and then this happened. I also want to delve more into writing action so this story will (hopefully) be action packed! Unlike the man form UNCLE, this is set modern day
> 
> any feedback is welcome and highly appreciated !!

“You ain’t gunna cry, are ya?”

 

Mickey scoffed, rattling his chains in an effort to flip the agent off, but coming up short because, yeah, he was _handcuffed_.

 

Besides the CIA watchdog assigned to transport him, the prison bus was empty. It was once a school bus of some kind, but had since been curtly repurposed, painted black so to blend in with the night. There was no airconditioning on the bus, apparently too much of a luxury for recently convicted felons.

 

Mickey could feel himself sweating through clothes that were three days old, stale and sticking to the hot skin of his back and the bend of his knee. His hands were cuffed to the seat in front of him, and his legs were chained almost entirely together. It was hard to believe that just four days ago he was piled into his dad’s old beat up camaro with Iggy and Joey, pulling off their biggest job yet. He had it all planned out to the tee, which is probably exactly why it went so horribly wrong.

 

And now, at twenty, officially an adult, he was getting his ass hauled off to jail, _real jail_.

 

“This is you, kid” watchdog said, tilting his head towards his side of the bus. Mickey turned his head and took in the large secluded building, surrounded only by guards and neatly trimmed bushes.

 

It didn’t _look_ like a jail.

 

If he had to guess, seeing as there were no wired fences or high concrete walls, the clean stack of bricks looked a lot like a government building of some kind. It looked more designed to keep people _out_ than it did suitable for keeping people _in_.

 

He didn’t ask and the watchdog didn’t seem too keen on giving him information. Instead, apparently finally overcome by his boredom, the burly watchdog thumbed through a blackberry that he pulled out of the pocket of his slacks, letting out a low whistle at whatever was printed on the screen.

 

Mickey could only imagine it was some kind of rap sheet when the meaty man smirked down at the lit screen and then back up at him “You’re a real piece of work, aren’t ya, kid?”

 

“Only southside's finest” Mickey shot back dryly, a bland smirk stretching his lips. He spit whatever he could muster from his dry mouth onto the aisle that separated him from the smug agent, because if there was one thing that growing up where he did and his subsequent life as a thief had taught him, it was the importance of a good bluff, even when you were scared out of your mind.

 

 _Especially_ when you were scared out of your mind.

 

Watchdog looked at the glob of spit as if not entirely surprised by its presence and maybe a little impressed for Mickey’s lack of respect for authority.  

 

“you’re lookin at a decade, at _least_ ” he decided, taking one last look at the screen before slipping the phone back into his pocket.  

 

 _a decade_ , Mickey sucked in a low and harsh breath, feeling himself stiff at the casual indifference that the government employee held for ten years of his life. The bus moved swiftly through the nighttime, jostling Mickey and chafing his wrists against the unforgiving metal of his constraints, reminding him where he was, _a decade_ , It echoed in his head.  

 

Mickey stayed pointedly silent for the rest of the ride, any sense of false bravado gone. It wasn’t long before the bus swung to a halt, shutting down and opening its doors for its passengers to exit. The watchdog stood, digging into the opposite pocket of his pants and fishing out a set of keys, muttering a quiet “This is your stop, kid” before stepping closer to work on unlocking his cuffs and anchle shakles.

 

The agent shook his head in good humor after catching a glimpse of the tattoos that spanned Mickey’s knuckles, _Fuck U-up_ , in bold and mostly crooked lettering. “Potential” he jeered a little too condescendingly, pulling Mickey to his feet by the bend of his elbow.

 

Mickey made it through the building with little incident. If you could call being manhandled by several different agents in matching suits _little incident_. But cuffed to a table, in a room that looked like the stage for a good cop bad cop routine, he figured it could be worse.

 

The small room was empty but he knew better than to assume no one was watching. He didn’t need to get up close to know that the large panel of glass was one way and that there were more than one set of eyes behind it. There were two chairs in the room, the promise of company loomed over him, making his knee bounce in anxiety. _A decade_ , he tried not to think about it.  

 

Mickey figured they’d want a testimony on his dad or maybe his brothers,  he figured they’d try to cut him a deal, what he didn’t figure was that they’d be offering him a _job_.

 

Well, perhaps _offering_ was the wrong word. _Blackmailing_ , he decided  

 

The short stacked man that sauntered into the room and had gotten around to introducing himself as Anderson, _just Anderson_ , had since removed his constraints, opting for a more _comfortable_ setting- though Mickey found it difficult to find any comfort in the situation at hand.  

 

“We, here at The CIA, see great potential in an individual with your special set of skills”

 

There was that word again, _potential_.

 

He didn’t mean to scoff, but then he’d never heard it quite so sugar coated before. A thief, he was _a thief_ , nothin’ too special about that if you asked him. Granted, he’d had a pretty good run, stolen some pretty expensive shit for his dad, even done some shady business with the Russians and gotten away with it till now. He was smart, or so Mandy always said, the mastermind of it all, if forced to give himself a title.

 

Still, there was something not quite right. Sure, he was a good thief, one of the best. And even _if_ the CIA was desperate enough to recruit Southside felons to their cause, there was still something missing…

 

And then it clicked

 

“You want me to help you take Terry down”

 

“ _See_ , Mr. Milkovich? You’re catching on already” Anderson praised, a little too close to how you’d congratulate a dog for sitting or rolling over

 

“The way I see it, you were born into that trainwreck of a family. Mother dead, what, for fifteen years now? Left at the scene of a police chase gone wrong, never inquired for again” He shook his head regretfully “You know what they say, Mr. Milkovich, you don’t choose family. We get that. We’re willing to see past that” Anderson paced the perimeter of the room in an obviously practiced routine. He circled Mickey like a shark circling it’s bleeding, crippled prey. Mickey could feel his luck running out

 

It felt like drowning.

 

Unbothered and unimpressed by the young man’s silence, Anderson worked on smoothing out the lapel of his suit before continuing

 

“Here I am, offering you a chance at a choice, a choice to be something _more_ , a chance to serve your country” He said, obviously mistaking Mickey for some sort of patriot

 

“Help us take down Terry Milkovich’s little international operation, join us at the CIA”

 

He would have told Anderson, _just Anderson_ , to stick his offer where the sun didn’t shine, but what choice did he have? Take the fall for Terry Milkovich? Serve _ten years_ of his life for that piece of shit? He may very well be a coward for it, but the thought scared the fucking hell out of him.

 

Anderson, mistaking his silence for defiance, tisk’ed his tongue in disapproval

 

“I’d hate to see so much potential go to waste, though I’m sure you’d be quite comfortable at any of our penitentiary facilities” he said, settling down onto the chair opposite to him, his deep set eyes steely and harsh

 

“I imagine a pretty kid like yourself would be quite popular on the inside”

 

Mickey hadn’t noticed how tight his grasp was on the edge of the steel table until Anderson raised a bushy eyebrow at the white knuckled grip

 

“And I’ll tell you what” he continued relentlessly “I’ll throw on a couple years, say, for assaulting a special agent?” He asked, as if waiting for his opinion

 

“Call it a parting gift among friends”

 

And there it was, the nail coming down onto the coffin, _his coffin_. Mickey spoke through a dry mouth, cracked lips, and the feeling of impending vomit.

 

“I’ll do it” he said blankly, trading in one jail sentence for another

 

Anderson smirked

 

“Welcome to the CIA, Mr. Milkovich”

 

* * *

 

Five years later, Mickey stumbled through the threshold of his small apartment. He was bleeding as he tried to maneuver past his living room, seeing two of everything and mistaking the hard wall for the entrance of his bathroom.

 

“Fuck!”

 

Admittedly, the mission hadn’t gone great

 

“Fuck fuck fuck _fuuuuuuckkkkk_ ”

 

He made it to the bathroom, somehow, feeling around the cold marble of the sink for the faucet. In the circular mirror hung above the skink, two reflections blinked back at him, wide eyed, and expectant. _Shit, the fuckers musta slipped something into his fucking drink_ . He hit his face with cold splashes of water until the reflections merged. Then, as carefully as he could manage, he patched the wound on his shoulder, only grunting as he swiped a disinfecting pad over the bullet hole. A nice little souvenir from the terrorist organization they’d just taken down. _One more for his collection_  

 

It should have come as a surprise to find Anderson perched casually on the armrest of his couch once he reemerged from the bathroom. He might have been surprised, had it been the first time Anderson had decided to make him a house call. The small, now almost chubby higher-up had found enough decency to knock the first couple of times, though he quickly lost interest in niceties and started making himself at home whenever he was so inclined.

 

Two weeks ago, Mickey had found the older man helping himself to his stash of weed, muttering something about taking the kid out of the streets but not the streets outta the kid, or some corny shit like that.

 

He’d since relocated his stash, instead finding his boss flipping through the channels of his muted T.V.

 

“You really gotta learn to fucking knock”

 

Without looking up from the Discovery Channel, Anderson spoke

 

“Got a job for you, Milkovich”

 

“Yeah, that seems like a fucking trend with you”

 

Anderson lifted an eyebrow as a lion stalked a herd of buffalo on the T.V. He spoke as if Mickey hadn’t, his tone low and steady

 

“International. Extraction. Special Agent Gallagher”

 

The single syllable explanations were doing nothing good for his headache and Mickey found himself coming onto the end of his patience for the day

 

“Listen, I’ve just been shot at, chased after, and quite possibly _roofied_ , so If you don't fucking mind-”  

 

“Remind me how long you prison sentence was, Milkovich” Anderson interrupted, voice tight and laced with warning.  

 

Mickey swallowed the end of his sentence, whatever he was saying burned his throat on its way down until it settled deep in his gut in the form of a knot.

 

Mickey’s jaw twitched in subtle tension as Anderson stood from his place on the couch. He did the buttons of his kaki trench coat patiently, as if waiting for the younger man to respond. When he didn’t, Anderson filled in the blanks for him

 

“You owe me five more years, kid” finally up to the top of his coat, he turned his attention on fixing the collar before meeting Mickey’s carefully blank eyes

 

“Don’t mistake me asking politely for you having a choice” Anderson’s stony gaze held his for a moment longer, only breaking the contact to straighten out his sleeves.

 

Apparently satisfied with their understanding, the CIA agent made a move towards the door, turning to leave but not before throwing something more over his shoulder

 

“Tomorrow, 8 am sharp, you’ll report for duty, with a better attitude, Milkovich”

 

Without so much as a second glance, Anderson was gone.

 

Once alone, Mickey let out a long breath.

 

It’d been five years, two of training and three of being, as Anderson liked to put it, one of the most effective agents on the field. He was good at what he did, even if he did it somewhat reluctantly.

 

He lived under the thumb of the CIA, his balls tight on a short leash, and the leash held by a small trench coat-wearing man. Mickey went where he was told, shot who he was told, _killed_ who he was told, all under the false pretense of patriotism and duty and _do it Milkovich or I’ll send your ass to jail_

 

Sometimes he wondered if it was any better than jail. Sure, he’d been able to leverage a deal for Iggy and Joey, and he knew Mandy was doing good

 

But still, he _wondered_ , and still, he missed home- no matter how fucking shitty it’d been to him.

 

Mickey sighed, rotating his shoulder and uttering a muttered curse when it throbbed angrily back at him. _At least it wasn’t in the ass this time_

 

He stared towards where Anderson had sat, his eyes blinking back to the T.V just as the lion finally pounced onto an unsuspecting buffalo, the slowest of the pack, or perhaps the most trusting.

 

His final words of the night were simple and spoken into his empty apartment

 

“Does no one use a fucking phone anymore?”


	2. Cockfighting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Make contact with Gallagher, deliver the book”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any error is mine, please point it out! 
> 
>  
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy!

The next day saw Mickey sitting in a dark room, watching some sort of slide show that Anderson put together.

 

“Guillermo Alvarez-” Anderson said as he walked into the small room, a cup of coffee in one hand and a clicker in the other. He used the rectangular control to move forward a couple slides to a surveillance picture of a tall man tucked away in a booth of some casino.

 

“-Is a very bad man. Drug trafficking, people trafficking, and more recently, _arms trafficking_ . We got word of a particularly... _hefty_ shipment set to cross over Tijuana in the next couple of weeks” The screengrab was blurry at best, but even through the pixelated image, Mickey could see a large scar that slashed through the man’s left eye and continued well into the span of his cheek. Mickey studied the image as Anderson slid over a thick file for his inspection. Inside, Mickey found names, dates, locations. He flipped through the file briefly before drawing his attention back towards the screen.

 

“Alvarez is currently on some kind of vacation in his native Mexico, down in a noisy corner of Cancun with his entourage. Apparently-” Anderson continued “Mr. Alvarez is an avid gambler” various images, similar to the first one, flashed onto the screen as Anderson spoke. Alvarez grasping poker chips, Alvarez holding a hand of cards, Alvarez looming over a roulette wheel….. Avid indeed

 

“We’ve got some good intel that Alvarez’s little black book of contacts goes where he goes. Lets just say he’s not the most trusting man. He’s an old soul, go figure” Anderson snorted rudely “Apparently writes it all down, has some beef against the digital era, makes the cyber angle near impossible. The names and contacts are most likely in some kind of code but-” Anderson waved a hand that said that he had someone to handle that phase of the mission. His job, he assumed, would be to get his hands on this book of secrets.

 

“Ian Gallagher, CIA” Anderson continued, flipping past various slides of text to another picture. The saturation changed too quickly for Mickey’s eyes, making him blink once and then twice at the bright image that filled the screen. Mostly, the picture was cheesy. Like some attempt at a James Bond poster, only instead of Daniel Craig they used a ginger.

 

Ian Gallagher was tall, wore a suit, and held a gun. His hair was the color of the blood Mickey could imagine had been spilled by the revolver clutched in his left hand. Mickey studied the image carefully in the near darkness of the room. Gallagher was attractive, he guessed, if you were into the whole orphan Annie sort of look.  

 

Briefly, Mickey wondered if they had some dumbass picture of him that they showed other agents in these little briefings.

 

“He was sent to recover this book three days ago. We’ve had mostly radio silence for the past 24 hours. We can’t blow his cover, he’s already involved, but we suspect he needs backup”

 

 _No shit_ , Mickey thought

 

“It was meant to be a simple extraction but, it turns out that Alvarez is working with some heavy hitters this time around, branching out, so to speak” Anderson spoke carefully, diplomatically.

 

Mickey raised his eyebrows as sarcastically as possible. There was really no point in tiptoeing around it, the CIA had miscalculated and put an agent’s ass on the line, simple as that. Mickey had half a mind to say so, but decided against it when Anderson’s not so subtle twitch made it clear that, yeah, he already knew as much.

 

Instead, Mickey gave a curt nod

 

“Make contact with Gallagher, deliver the book” seemed simple enough

 

But then again, it always did

 

* * *

 

It took Ian a day and most of another to find Alvarez, though in retrospect he’d been looking in all the wrong places.

 

Anderson’s intel said Cancun, but apparently bougie Casinos in upscale Mexico were only scratching the surface with this guy. As it turned out, he had a taste for the…….. _traditional_ , so to speak.

 

Tastes which brought Ian closer to Tijuana than he should be, perched discreetly by a sleek bar in an establishment that could only be described as an anomaly.

 

To say that it smelled would be an understatement, mostly, it _reeked_. Ian figured that the smell was due to the pens and pens of live animals that surrounded the large dirt pit at the very heart of the underground club. The spot was, apparently, half swanky bar and half cockfighting ring, and despite the odd mix of luxury and that god awful aroma, Ian couldn't say it was the strangest place he’d ever been sent on a job. In fact, if he was being honest, it barely even unsettled his top five. Anderson did always have a way with putting him in compromising situations.

 

Across the room, sitting tucked away in a far off booth, was his target, surrounded by a ring of what Ian was euphemistically thinking of as his ‘business partners’, using the term loosely.

 

It took him an entire day at several Mexican dive bars to gather that Alvarez owned the underground establishment, a sort of homage to his father’s rise to wealth, and a place to indulge his gambling habit, of course. The club was crawling with money, the air a mingle of animal stench and expensive cigars.

 

Ian watched Alvarez closely over the rim of his scotch, not intently enough to blow his cover, but enough to see exactly what he was looking for.  

 

Alvarez sat with a woman in his lap, watching two gamecocks nearly kill each other under the reverberation of whistles and yelling. His circle of friends had since disintegrated and he regarded the violent scene before him with only mild interest. An idle hand ran up and down the length of the woman’s exposed upper thigh in lazy circles that seemed more bored than suggestive. As Ian watched, he noticed that the Mexican Kingpin’s grin only turned lascivious when he spotted something else entirely. Ian traced the path of his gaze to find that the object of Alvarez’s attention was, no doubt, a young gamecock handler who stood almost awkwardly by a cluster of agitated caged birds.  

 

_Bingo_

 

Ian covered a grin with another swipe at his scotch, raising an intrigued and almost impressed eyebrow at how open minded Alvarez was when it came down to choosing partners.Alvarez was tall, broad, and decidedly macho in every sense of the word. Hairy, violent, nothing really particularly gay about him, no product in his curly hair, no fussing over clothing choice, nothing but a subtle eye for masculine beauty, apparently. Ian almost frowned, maybe he was losing his touch.  

 

Before he could take too long picking apart his target’s sexuality or his own shortcomings in _noticing_ , the match was announced over and a winning bird was pulled out of the cockpit, less recognizable than it had entered. _Time was running out_.

 

Ian stood carefully out of Alvarez’s line of sight, considering his next move. The clock was ticking and he’d already gone too long without reporting back to Anderson, a risk, he knew, though the last couple of days had been spent in less than good company with little spare time for chit chat.

 

By the time Ian came around to a decision, Alvarez, who had apparently since removed the woman from his lap, was nowhere to be found.

 

 _Shit_  

 

Before he could so much as blink, two things happened almost simultaneously.

 

 _One_ : Ian spotted one of the goons that had been flanking Alvarez for the entire evening leading the young man that guarded the cages through the crowd and towards some sort of back room

 

 _Two_ : A large, no doubt disgruntled patron of the club, deciding that there had been some foul play involved in the demise of his gamecock, took a swing at another almost equally large man at the edge of the pit, catching him by surprise and pushing him into the dirt of the ring.  

 

And because this mission was apparently turning into a Mexican telenovela, a proper bar fight erupted through the club over the music that somehow fit the tempo of the brawl quite well. Bodies were thrown across the room, breaking tables and smashing glass, Men insulted other men’s mothers and were subsequently headbutted so hard that the contact nearly made an audible _smack_.

 

Ian knew it was only a matter of time before the altercation took a turn for the worse, considering the fact that the men gathered were mostly arms dealers. Satisfied with the intel gathered throughout the night, Ian made a turn towards the now less heavily guarded exit, only to be halted by a sudden fist connecting with the side of his jaw.

 

The angle of the hit was awkward, too close to his ear, but enough to throw him off balance and send a sharp pain down the length of his face.

 

“Fuck” Ian muttered, mostly under his breath

 

He might have hit the guy back, or done anything other than blink at him in bewilderment- but when he turned enough to see his attacker, he was left staring into a set of clear blue eyes that looked at him with too much intention to be coincidental. The guy was wearing plaid, jeans, and a red bandana tied around his neck- a gamecock handler’s uniform

 

“Sorry ‘bout your jaw man, gotta blend in, right?”

 

The shorter man took two fistfulls of Ian’s button down shirt and pulled him in close.     

 

“We gotta get the hell outta here, this place is about to light up like the fucking fourth of July”

 

He smelled like aftershave and cigarette smoke, and up as close as Ian was, he could see a light dusting of freckles over the pale bridge of his nose. He didn’t look like your typical gamecock handler, too….. _american_ . Ian regarded the set of tattoos on the man’s knuckles that caught his eye, _fuck u-up_ , it might have been the most comforting thing he’d seen all week.

 

“Have you made contact yet?” assuming he was talking about what Ian thought, he shook his head no

 

“Alright” the guy said, looking around briefly before tightening his grip on the fabric of Ian’s shirt. And then they were mobile, hitting different surfaces unceremoniously, shattering a couple glasses of half full liquor here and there. It took Ian a little longer than it should have to realize that they were slowly moving towards the door, the man currently swinging him about steering them, careful to blend into the escalating fight.

 

“Door on the left” Ian said, shaking the man off and grabbing him by the collar, effectively taking the wheel. He swerved to avoid a guy getting pummeled by two others on the surface of the bar, moving the dark haired man sideways and pushing him up against the nearest wall- They were nearly to the door, only one guard left standing in their way.

 

Ian was about to open his mouth to formulate a plan that would draw the least amount of attention to themselves when the other man untangled himself abruptly, walked straight up to the guard who was nearly a head taller, towering over the exit like a building,  and decked him square in the face. The guard fell over like a sack of potatoes, leaving Ian to stare at his counterpart in mild horror before looking around to see if anyone of consequence had noticed them.  

 

The dark haired man shook his hand off and, when Ian failed to trail him, looked over his shoulder with irritation

 

“You comin, or are you gunna paint my fucking portrait, Gallagher?”

 

Convinced that no one had been unoccupied enough to catch the slip up, Ian followed the man out into the darkness, into a forgotten street that was disturbed only by a couple of bikes riding along here and there.  

 

Once outside, at a safe distance, without the stench of Alvarez’s sketchy club, Ian stopped and slumped against the brick wall of the alley they were taking as some kind of shortcut through the city.

 

His companion, sensing a pause in his footsteps, stopped, turned, and lifted an eyebrow in his direction.

 

Agitated that his evening had gone to shit and that whoever this guy was could have blown his cover with his not so subtle exit, Ian let irritation color his voice when he asked

 

“So, who the _fuck_ are _you_?”

 

The shorter, angrier man looked at him through a raised eyebrow and a thumb on his lip, magnificently unimpressed

 

“Mickey Milkovich, CIA”

**Author's Note:**

> (Tags will be updated as I go)


End file.
